This month is declared ‘MicroMania’ by the guys over at the largest online poker room, Poker Stars. After recently opening their very own VIP room, which is hosted by their star player, Daniel Negreanu, Poker Stars now turn to the players who don’t spend as much at the virtual poker table. All of this month, if you are a smaller player, you will be granted promotions, tournaments, benefits and bonuses.

First of all, you will get a first deposit bonus from Poker Stars, just so you can start off with a bang. After that, you can start playing and get right into business.

This special promotion month can be seen in all events on Poker Stars. For example, in Cash Games, until the end of the month you will receive 50% more VIP rewards. To put it simpler, for every dollar that you win you will be credited 10 VIP points, and that means that you will earn frequent player points at a much faster pace. As this is, in fact, MICRO-Mania, this offer only applies to $0.05/$0.10 and $0.10/$0.20 tables.

                             The Tournaments are not forgotten by the Poker Stars team, as you’ll get to participate in the so called MicroMania Specials, special multi table tournaments that are running every day, four times a day. Sit & Go’s also await players, with special tournaments running all month long.

                             This all culminates with the largest events that will happen all month long, every Sunday. Satellites are already running on Poker Stars, and you can qualify for one of the two remaining ones – the one in London on the 18th of July and the Main Event in the final Sunday of July. The packagest that you can win through satellites are worth $5,000 each. Don’t miss out!

Are you not a member of the largest online poker room yet? Perhaps this special promotion is all that you needed to sign up. Check it out!

Stealing the blinds in poker

You can defend your blind from either the small blind or the big blind and it does not matter too much from which you are defending. There are a number of different things that you have to take into account when you are planning on defending your blind though and doing it poorly or at a bad time to defend it can make it backfire with epic results. The first and most important thing to remember is that you should just jump in and defend your blind the first time that someone is trying to steal it. Unless it has happened a number of times, you should not jump in with a poor hand and defend it.

The next thing that is important to remember is to try to defend your blind in the most ideal situation which is where you have a playable hand. Defending your blind with a bad or extremely speculative hand is a very risky proposition but if you have a decent hand, it is much less risky to put in a raise. With that said, it is sometimes unavoidable to defend your blind with a hand that is less than stellar and in these scenarios you should avoid getting into a reraise battle with opponent.

If your hand is better, however, and especially if you have a larger chip stack, do not be afraid to re-reraise if the person reraises you and you think that they are just trying to push you around. I have had occasions where I have pushed all in defending my blind. I do not recommend pushing all in to defend your blind if you can avoid it as it has both succeeded and failed spectacularly for me. The entire point of defending the blind is to show strength to the player or players who are trying to take advantage of the inherent weakness of being the blinds and standing up for yourself. If you show continued weakness at the poker table, the other players will circle you like sharks and continue to peck at you until you have no chips left.

Defending your blinds is something that you occasionally have to do in order to keep a strong table image and prevent players from trying to walk all over you. Poker players are like wild animals and if you show repeated signs of weakness they will attack you with full force so you occasionally have to stand tall and face the assault head on.
Defend your blinds at bestpoker.com while cashing in on up to $2000 free in welcome bonus. Use the best poker bonus code: bpbc2000 and your $2000 deposit will be matched 100%.

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The concept of being results orientated in poker is important to understand because it can seriously affect the way you think about and play poker. In a nutshell, results-orientated thinking refers to the outcome of the hand influencing how you think you played the hand. You hear it all the time from players “I told you so”, often times to justify a poor play. What they fail to realize is the outcome of the hand does not show if you played the hand correctly. It’s faulty logic and stupid to think that just because you win a hand you played it a hand well. Luck is a component of the game and suckouts do happen, so there will be times where it was unavoidable to lose the hand, even when you play correctly.

Downswings are something every player has to deal with and they don’t necessarily reflect how good or bad you may be playing, so tilting and poker bankroll management is important. If you are not familiar with variance then it’s something you need to understand well, because its something you can’t avoid.

What you need to realize is that even though you lose a hand, doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t play the hand well. The same can be said about winning a hand, you could have played a hand terribly and still win the hand. The winnings graph doesn’t reflect how well you are playing. You could have a huge upswing in earnings over a short period of time, and for all you know, it could just mean you have been running good and hitting every flop hard. You could mistake this for thinking you are playing well, when really you just have been getting really good cards. Do you think this is going to always happen? Of course not, which is why you need to realize, especially when you are getting started in your poker career, it’s the decisions and actions you make at the table which is important.

All you can hope to do is make the correct decisions, and get the chips in the middle with the best of it. If you consistently do this you will make money in the long run. Playing with a results orientated mindset can get you in a lot of trouble when you are playing and end up costing you a lot of money. Let’s say you lose a few big pots in a row where you had the best hand on the turn, get all the chips in the middle, and the other player sucked out on you on the river. This could easily make you go on tilt and make you not play your best game, and you end up donking off more chips because you are not focused and playing how you would normally.

Instead, if you learn to deal with variance and bad beats, and evaluate your play without bias, you know that in the long run those plays will make you money, so what is the point in getting frustrated and losing even more money still thinking about it?

Naturally you will want to review your losing hands to evaluate your play. Every time you lost a big pot, you should post the hand on a poker forum where other experienced players will give feedback on the hand. It’s easy to get frustrated with your game when you lose money, but if you get feedback from other players in how you played the hand, you may come to realize that you actually took the correct line and didn’t play the hand poorly at all. The hand could have just been a cooler and you just need to suck it up. By getting other players to review your hands, not only will it improve your game, because it gets you thinking more deeply about poker, but it will help your ego and remind you that you are playing well, even when you are losing hands. Confidence is a huge aspect of a winning player’s poker arsenal, and by not thinking in a results orientated manner, it will only help to make you a better player and less prone to tilt. Play online poker at partypoker.com and get up to $500 free by using the party poker bonus code: just500 when you sign up. Then you first deposit will be matched 100% up to $500 free.

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Pokertime Games:

You will find many Poker Freerolls, guaranteed tournaments, and ring games available at Poker Time.
Buy ins to some of their guaranteed tournaments start out as low as $3.00 and you will find tournaments with guarantees paying out well over $7,000.
$150,000 guaranteed tournaments can be bought into for as little as $6.00 and are running quite often.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with online poker games such as Texas Hold Em, Omaha, 7 Card Stud, and 5 Card Draw, you will be happy to know that Poker Time would like to show you how to play, even showing you various poker strategies.

A great poker strategy for any of you that like to travel and play live poker would be to win a seat to the Irish Open.
Poker games guide is pretty exited about this promotion.
For as little as $5 you can try to win yourself a seat and money for accommodations like airfare, hotel, and some extra spending cash for yourself.
More Irish Open Poker Satellite Tournaments.
The same could be said for the ECOSTT, which you can win a seat to and be treated to a buy in, 3 nights stay, access to the Welcome Party, and $800 to cover travel expenses and spending money.
Poker Time seems to really know how to treat their players.

Pokertime Bonuses:

As a first time depositor at Poker Time, you will be treated to a 100% match on your money, good up to $200 as well as invitations to 5 different freerolls.
Your bonus will be released in $10 increments when you play online poker games and to release your bonus you will have to earn two times your bonus in points.
For example, if you were to deposit $40 you would have to earn 80 points to release each increment of your bonus.
It is important to keep in mind that you will only have 30 days to complete this task.
Earning poker bonus points is not to difficult however, as you will earn 2.5 bonus points for every $1 in tourney fees you pay and on average, you will earn 1 point in most rings with $1-$5 taken in rake. open an account here.

Poker Time has a pretty decent poker VIP program set up.
They have 5 different levels with a certain amount of points to earn each month to obtain that status.
Blue 0-30 points, Bronze 31:500 points, Silver 501:1500, Gold 1501:3000, and Platinum at 3,001+ Points.
Being of status can earn you into leader board poker tournaments with big guaranteed prize pools and various other benefits.

Pokertime Deposit Options:

The following options are available if you would like to make a deposit at Poker Time Poker: Solo, Maestro, Visa, usemybank, MasterCard, NETeller, and Click2Pay.

For a smaller room to play online poker games at, PokerTime seems to be trying very hard to provide a great atmosphere for its players.
You can not go wrong playing for a room that sends you to live events and takes care of all your needs in the process.
For tournaments players, this is a room that you need to check out.

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Coupon code: sunnybonus

SunPoker.com is one of the earliest rooms that were found in the internet, growing in time at a reasonable rate and finally joining the iPoker network, which is currently the third largest poker network in the world. As such, there is plenty of traffic for all kinds of games, and they offer the best poker bonus for new players.

You’ll find thousands of players from lowest to the highest stakes and there’s a mix of fish and experts that will provide some very entertaining games.
The software is good, but not outstanding, providing some acceptable graphics.

Bonus/loyalty program

The best poker bonus is a 100% match-up bonus when you use the sun poker coupon code: sunnybonus, valid for the first 90 days and up to a $500 100% match bonus on your first deposit. Use the Coupon Code when you open your account, see the picture below.

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Among the poker loyalty programs is the VIP Poker Club, on which you earn points for every game you play, giving you cash prizes and special freerolls tournaments.
This provides some kind of rakeback program which returns the VIP Club members money depending on their VIP status.

Software

The software of Sun Poker, created by PlayTech, is mature after many years of operation, so you’ll find a good and time-tested functionality with nice graphics, but nothing extraordinary.
If you’re looking for a reliable software, but with not many features or state-of-the-art graphics, this is the room for you.
Cash games

Sun Poker features the usual varieties of poker: Texas Hold’em and all its variations, 7 Card stud, Omaha, Omaha Hi Lo.
There are also one-to-one tables that have recently become more popular, but no speed games.

Tournaments

There are many tournaments available at Sun Poker, but nothing special: there are all kinds of single and multi-table tournaments, there are satellites, there are freerolls and some exclusive $3,000 and $10,000 tournaments reserved for the best cash games players.

There’s a $400,000 weekend tournament as part of the iPoker network, and there are other tournaments, such as the $250,000 Guaranteed (every Sunday), which has a buy-in of $215. Also available are some re-buy tournaments with prizes of $100,000 (and a buy-in of $55) every Friday night.
Opponents

Sun Poker attracts a mix of sharks and newbies, so, while it’s not the poker room with the easiest competition, you should know that you can always find fish and despite the rather low flop rate, many don’t play as good and there are plenty of opportunities of winning.
Traffic

The traffic, which exceeds 15000 players during the peak hours, is enough to give you the chance to play with all kinds of opponents, from playing small sums to those playing higher stakes.
The number of tournament players will sometimes reach up to 20,000.
The only thing that limits the traffic is that they don’t accept players from the United States.
Support

The support of Sun Poker is one of the best in the world.
Not just in the quality of their responses, but also in the wide variety of ways you can contact them: email (which is available 24 hours a day), telephone (having numbers both in the United Kingdom and in North America), fax and live chat (14 hours a day).

The poker room has an excellent security policy, its random generator being throughly tested and there’s a system that analyses hands to predict a collusion or any secret agreements between your opponents who want to cheat in order to win.
Transactions

Deposits can be made with Visa, Citadel, Prepaid ATM, MasterCard, ECP, Neteller, FirePay, Wire Transfer, Money Order and Check, while cash outs can be done through Neteller, FirePay, Citadel, Check and ECP.

Get started today with the best sun poker coupon code: sunnybonus

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